Disney's Marvel Studios found an inventive way to use Facebook to back upcoming motion picture The Avengers: Early screenings will be offered in the cities where the most likes are generated.

Disney’s Marvel Studios found an inventive way to use Facebook to back upcoming motion picture The Avengers: Early screenings will be offered in the cities where the most likes are generated.

The Avengers is scheduled for theatrical release May 4, but fans in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Houston, and Miami will get a chance to view the film April 14, as the most likes came from those cities.

Admission is free, but it is also first-come, first-served. Let the camping out begin.

Other cities are not out of the running, however, as the studio will announce five more cities that have been the source of the most likes next Monday at 9 a.m. PT.

The campaign is definitely a fun idea, but it is still heavily tilted in favor of larger cities, where screenings would have likely been held, anyway. We’d like to see a movie studio incorporate Facebook into a similar initiative where a heavily anticipated film debuts in a smaller city or town.

The Avengers, which had amassed more than 956,000 likes at the time of this post, stars: